Swings and Roundabouts
by wilfred the pickle
Summary: As Homura continues to fail to protect Madoka, she begins to lose hope that her wish could ever be granted. Maybe some people aren't meant to be saved, Homura included. Rated for a little coarse language and a little gore. Slight MadoHomu. Contains spoilers!


**Rating: ****M - coarse language, slight amounts of gore, and bastardization of canon.  
****Pairing: ****Ambiguous, onesided(?) MadoHomu. Could be love, could be intense friendship.  
****Disclaimer: ****I own nothing except my own writing. Heck, I don't even own the idea for this. **

**A/N: ****Written as a gift. Angsty/fluffy oneshot…thing. I probably screwed up canon, so I apologise in advance. Contains gore, coarse language, and lots of spoilers.**

**For purposes of this fic, we're going to assume that the one hundredth timeline Homura goes through is the timeline shown in episodes 1-9, because I'm a neat freak and need everything in order… xD**

**Also, Madoka wasn't a magical girl in every other timeline for the purpose of this fic. I can't remember if that was already the case or not, but yeah, that's what's happening here.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

_ten ;;_

She's failed _again_.

Madoka lies before her, body broken and bleeding on the ground. The little twitches her body makes are reminiscent of an animal in their final moment on earth, her delicate, bloodstained fingers reaching toward the gaping hole in her chest with a mixture of disbelief and resignation. Homura wants to run to her friend as she dies, even knowing she can no longer prolong the inevitable -

- but the strong arms holding her back won't let her. The faint sounds of the scream of a dying animal slowly begin to buzz in her ears, and she breaks free of the stranger's arms wrapped around her torso and starts to run towards Madoka, only to collapse to her knees when she finds she doesn't have the strength to stand on her own two legs. She hears a voice from behind her curse - _Kyouko, _she thinks detachedly - and rush to restrain her again, but Homura's already crawled towards her friend and kneeled over her.

"Homura…" Madoka croaks, one hand caressing Homura's face, the other trailing through the mix of blood and organs across her chest. "I…"

And then Madoka - _Homura's best friend _- is once again reduced to nothing but a corpse. Homura lowers her head and takes a deep breath, closing her eyes tightly and trying her best not to scream out of sheer frustration.

"You're not from here, are you?" a familiar voice says, and Homura turns her head to see Kyuubey, sitting there with that damn smile it always has plastered over its stupid face.

Homura turns her eyes back to her friend's lifeless form, reaching out a hand and closing Madoka's eyes softly. "It doesn't matter to you anymore," she whispers hoarsely, feeling fresh tears prick at her eyes.

"Doesn't it?" Kyuubey challenges, wrapping itself around Homura's leg. "How many times have you tried to fix your mistakes, Homura?"

Homura gulps. "This is the tenth," she mutters, growling when she can almost feel Kyuubey's smug grin.

"I wish you luck," it says, and damn it, Homura can't tell if this _thing_ is genuinely wishing her good luck or just screwing with her. She strongly suspects the latter.

With a sigh, she wipes the tears from her eyes one last time and stands, already beginning to feel her existence in this timeline slipping away. Soon, she'll wake up in the hospital and have to repeat the entire damn month again, and she couldn't care less that Kyouko is now staring at her like she's some kind of weird time-traveling alien - which, she guesses, she kind of is - but Kyouko doesn't need an explanation. Not with Madoka, Mami and Sayaka all dead. Homura smiles a little; Mami didn't kill anyone this time.

_You're losing it, Akemi_, she thinks with a bitter smile, feeling the world slip away as she puts her powers to use.

She vows silently to herself that on her eleventh try, she will not let Madoka down.

* * *

_thirteen ;;_

Next on her timetable is math class, and Homura is sick of having to sit through the same lesson thirteen times just to keep an eye on Madoka. She always sits with Sayaka, and every time Homura looks at the blue-haired girl all she can see is a witch in the making. _A witch that consistently screws up her plans and kills everyone_, she thinks, eyeing Sayaka from across the cafeteria. She knows that Sayaka doesn't mean it, of course, but she's a constant spanner in the works for Homura. Neither of them are magical girls at this point, and Homura intends to keep it that way. The eleventh and twelfth tries were both disappointing failures, but Homura will be damned if she lets that stop her from trying again.

It's with a heavy heart that she walks over to Madoka's table. The rose-haired girl is sitting in between Hitomi and Sayaka, the two other girls giving her hostile looks. _Maybe they're all secretly rebels at heart_, Homura wonders, and thinks of a new tactic.

"You two have math class next, right?" she asks, pointing to Madoka and Sayaka. Hitomi starts to nod, but is silenced with a glare from Sayaka.

"Yeah. What's it to you?" Sayaka replies rudely. Homura knows she should probably feel offended, but after almost a year of trying and failing to protect both of them, she just doesn't have the energy to get angry at Sayaka's comments. They're meaningless to her now, when she knows what will happen later. As far as Homura knows, Sayaka ends up succumbing to her despair in every single scenario. Once she felt bad for the girl, but now she's realised she can't save both of them; only one can survive, and unfortunately for Sayaka, Homura will always pick Madoka.

"I don't feel like math right now. Want to skip class and go to the mall instead?"

All three are silent for a moment, each with different expressions. Hitomi looks shocked, Madoka just looks blankly at Homura and Sayaka gives her the least amused glare in all of history.

"Are you stupid?" she asks with a tone that could have killed the dinosaurs.

"Don't be rude," Madoka chides her friend gently, swatting her lightly on the arm. She then turns back to Homura and smiles uneasily. "Sorry, but, uh…skipping class isn't really our thing. We could hang out some other time, maybe-"

"Or maybe not," Sayaka concludes. "I...need to go see a few teachers. Are you two coming?" she says, standing up abruptly.

Madoka and Hitomi take the obvious cue and follow Sayaka out of the cafeteria, Madoka waving goodbye to Homura. "See you later," she calls out in a somewhat disbelieving tone. And Homura has to smile a little at the absurdity of what she's done, but hell, if she hasn't tried everything possible, then she's wasted her wish.

* * *

_forty-three ;;_

It must be the third or fourth time Homura has seen this particular result happen. She's begun to stop counting the number of times she's been through the same month and instead focus on one and only one thing - saving Madoka. By now, her heart has frozen over to the torment of others - Sayaka, Mami and Kyouko are all simply pawns in her endgame.

By now, Mami is long-dead, her head torn off and eaten by the witch Charlotte. In every timeline she's lived thus far, Homura's found that if Madoka has not yet made her contract, Mami dies by Charlotte's hand. She feels the inexplicable urge to laugh when she realises that in a twisted way, Madoka is right - had she become a magical girl, Mami would not have died.

_But that's beside the point, _she reminds herself. _Mami doesn't matter. Only Madoka._

_Is it considered dangerous_, she wonders, _if you neglect or harm others in order to save the person you love?_

_Is it considered obsessive, _she wonders, _if you've relived the same month for roughly three point five years all so you can save said person?_

Sayaka is "witching out" as some would call it, and Madoka and Kyouko are the only two girls left. Kyouko's battling desperately while Madoka is watching in horror and awe, Kyuubey eyeing the entire affair with an air of indifference and twisted saccharine cheerfulness. All the while Homura stands guard in front of Madoka, making sure no harm comes to her. There's still hope left in this timeline. Still a tiny, transient sliver of hope that Homura clings to, and hopes Madoka will cling to as well.

And as suddenly as the battle began, it's over. Kyouko calmly collects Sayaka's Grief Seed with the stilted, mechanical movements of someone who's not quite all there. Examining the seed dully, she turns to Homura and Madoka slowly, and for a second Homura is so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of manic rage in her eyes that for a second she forgets her purpose; protecting Madoka.

With a roar, Kyouko launches herself at the rose-haired girl, pushing Homura out of the way at a speed that not even she can counter. Homura hears the impact before she sees the damage; Madoka's pleas, a strange wet thud, an ear-splitting shriek.

And just like that, Homura has failed for the forty-third time in a row.

"_Now_ look what you did," Kyuubey says from behind her, and Homura simply smirks.

"I still have another chance," she says simply, and the last thing she sees of this timeline is Kyuubey's soulless stare into her eyes.

* * *

_seventy-eight ;;_

On what Homura thinks must be her thousandth retrial, _it _happens again.

Mami is dead. Sayaka has lost against Hitomi, and is now losing against herself. Madoka hasn't contracted. And Kyouko…well, Homura has a good idea of what will happen to Kyouko if she tries and pulls that shit again. This time, Homura stands her guard against Madoka, knowing full well what will happen if Kyouko is allowed to get anywhere close to her.

As soon as the battle is over, Homura watches Kyouko carefully. A gun appears in her hand, ready to shoot the girl if need be. She watches Kyouko bend over and pick up the Grief Seed, pausing to cleanse her Soul Gem. She doesn't notice Madoka running over to Kyouko until it's too late.

Homura takes her aim and fires, the bullet traveling out of her gun's barrel at breakneck speeds, whizzing through the air and straight into the heart of Madoka Kaname.

Kyouko shrieks in fright as the body suddenly collapsing at her feet is pierced with a bullet that was intended for her. Homura shrieks too, but Kyouko clenches her fists and pins her up against a wall before she can run over and check if the poor girl is even still _alive_ -

"-The hell was that for?!" Kyouko spits angrily, holding Homura up by her collar.

"I…" All Homura can focus on is the way that Madoka seems to almost reach out for Homura, for the girl that shot her in the heart - but Homura already knows she's merely imagining it, because who could break their heart and live to tell the tale?

Nobody except Homura herself.

So just like the seventy-seven other times, she lets herself slip away, but this time there's one tiny difference.

This time, she doesn't promise herself that she'll win the next round.

* * *

_ninety-nine ;;_

It's Homura's first day of school for the ninety-ninth time, and she hasn't been able to snatch a glimpse of Madoka Kaname even _once_.

In the - _has it really been close to eight years? _- countless months she's relived, she hasn't lost so much hope as she has for this one. Late at night, in between transitions of time, every single day she questions whether she really can protect Madoka. Maybe it isn't just meant to be. Maybe her wish, though it can transcend entropy and time, simply isn't powerful enough to save a girl as good and pure as Madoka. Maybe Madoka is like Sayaka - doomed in every universe.

Homura hopes desperately that this isn't the case. If she realises her wish is impossible, what will happen to her?

She's so wrapped in her own thoughts that she doesn't notice the sneers of some popular kids as they stick their foot out into the middle of the classroom's aisle, tripping Homura over their feet. Her books and pens spill out everywhere, papers falling softly down to the ground. Homura curses under her breath and is on the verge of going full magical-girl on those jerks as she reaches for her books, when a small hand suddenly covers her own.

_Madoka…_

The rose-haired girl smiles warmly down at her and Homura notices she's picked up all her dropped papers and organized them into a neat pile. "Here," Madoka says shyly. "I'm sorry about those people. Not everyone here is like that, I swear."

Homura blinks and takes the papers from her slowly, slotting them neatly in her folder. "Thank you," she mutters, feeling just like the clumsy transfer student straight out of hospital from eight years ago. It boggles Homura's mind that in her world it's been over eight years of protecting one girl, whereas for Madoka, this is the very first time they've met.

Madoka smiles again, offering Homura a hand up. "No problem," she replies as Homura gratefully accepts her hand. From across the classroom, she sees Sayaka smiling at the two of them, and Homura is struck in that moment at just how…_human_ they seem compared to herself.

As Madoka walks away and goes back to sitting with her friends, Homura allows herself a tiny smile. She knows it could be useless. She knows she may not win this fight against destiny for a long, long time. But Madoka gives her hope for the future, and as long as that hope is there, Homura will keep fighting.

And even though she may not win this round, Homura promises that she will do whatever it takes to win the next.

* * *

_Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. _

_-Lao Tzu_

* * *

**Yeah, I can't remember many of the finer details of this series' canon (even though I finished it a few days ago - oops) so apologies if I got anything drastically wrong. And yes, that ending quote totally was in Criminal Minds. **

**"It's swings and roundabouts" is a phrase that describes a situation in which there are as many advantages as there are problems.. I thought it was a good way to describe a magical girl's situation, and it also sounded pretty.**

**Thank you to **_**hanyue**_**, who this fic was gifted to, for giving me the prompt. Which I didn't entirely fill, but I hope this is good enough. XD**

**Thank you for reading!**


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